Fighting settles nothing but the relative strength. No light
is thrown on the cause of the conflict -- on the question of fact that
caused the war.

Every good man longs for the time when war shall cease. We are all
hoping for a day of universal justice -- a day of universal freedom --
when man shall control himself, when the passions shall become obedient
to the intelligent will. But the coming of that day will not be hastened
by preaching the doctrines of total depravity and eternal revenge. That
sun will not rise the quicker for preaching salvation by faith. The star
that shines above that dawn, the herald of that day, is Science, not superstition
-- Reason, not religion.

Every good man, every good woman, should try to do away with war,
to stop the appeal to savage force. Man in a savage state relies upon his
strength, and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong. Civilized
men do not settle their differences by a resort to arms. They submit the
quarrel to arbitrators and courts. This is the great difference between
the savage and the civilized.

No man has imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors
and cruelties of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing through
the bodies of men! Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed,
the mutilated, the mangled!

An old monk was in charge of a monastery that had been built
above the bones of a saint. These bones had the power to cure diseases
and they were so placed that by thrusting the arm through an orifice they
could be touched by the hand of the pilgrim. Many people, afflicted in
many ways, came and touched these bones. Many thought they had been benefitted
or cured, and many in gratitude left large sums of money with the monk.
One day the old monk addressed his assistant as follows: "My dear
son, business has fallen off, and I can easily attend to all who come.
You will have to find another place. I will give you the white donkey,
a little money, and my blessing."

So the young man mounted upon the beast and went his way. In a few days
his money was gone and the white donkey died. An idea took possession of
the young man's mind. By the side of the road he buried the donkey, and
then to every passerby held out his hands and said in solemn tones: "I
pray thee give me a little money to build a temple above the bones of the
sinless one."

Such was the success that he built the temple, and then thousands came
to touch the bones of the sinless one. The young man became rich,
gave employment to many assistants and lived in the greatest luxury.

One day he made up his mind to visit his old master. Taking with him
a large retinue of servants he started for the old home. When he reached
the place the old monk was seated by the doorway. With great astonishment
he looked at the young man and his retinue. The young man dismounted and
made himself known, and the old monk cried: "Where hast thou been?
Tell me, I pray thee, the story of thy success."

"Ah," the young man replied, "old age is stupid, but
youth has thoughts. Wait until we are alone and I will tell you all."

So that night the young man told his story, told about the death and
burial of the donkey, the begging of money to build a temple over the bones
of the sinless one, and of the sums of money he had received for the cures
the bones had wrought.

When he finished a satisfied smile crept over his pious face as he added:
"Old age is stupid, but youth has thoughts."

"Be not so fast," said the old monk, as he placed his trembling
hand on the head of his visitor, "Young man, this monastery in which
your youth was passed, in which you have seen so many miracles performed,
so many diseases cured, was built above the sacred bones of the mother
of your little jackass."

We want to do what we can to compel every church to pay taxes
on its property as other people pay on theirs. Do you know that if church
property is allowed to go without taxation, it is only a question of time
when they will own a large percent of the property of the civilized world?
It is the same as compound interest; only give it time. If you allow it
to increase without taxing it for its protection, its growth can only be
measured by the time in which it has to grow. The church builds an edifice
in some small town, gets several acres of land. In time a city rises around
it. The labor of others has added to the value of this property, until
it is worth millions. If this property is not taxed, the churches will
have so much in their hands that they will again become dangerous to the
liberties of mankind. There never will be real liberty in this country
until all property is put upon a perfect equality. If you want to build
a Joss house, pay taxes. If you want to build churches, pay taxes. If you
want to build a hall or temple in which Freethought and science are to
be taught, pay taxes. Let there be no property untaxed. When you fail to
tax any species of property, you increase the tax of other people
owning the rest. To that extent, you unite church and state. You compel
the Infidel to support the Catholic. I do not want to support the Catholic
Church. It is not worth supporting. It is an unadulterated evil. Neither
do I want to reform the Catholic Church. The only reformation of which
that church or any orthodox church is capable, is destruction. I want to
spend no more money on superstition. Neither should our money be taken
to support sectarian schools. We do not wish to employ any chaplains in
the navy, or in the army, or in the Legislatures, or in Congress.

The Roman Catholic Church is the enemy of intellectual liberty.
It is the enemy of investigation. It is the enemy of free schools. That
church always has been, always will be, the enemy of freedom. It works
in the dark. When in a minority it is humility itself -- when in power
it is the impersonation of arrogance. In weakness it crawls -- in power
it stands erect, and compels its victims to fall upon their faces. The
most dangerous institution in this world, so far as the intellectual liberty
of man is concerned, is the Roman Catholic Church. Next to that is the
Protestant Church.

It is not fair to make the Catholic support a Protestant school,
nor is it just to collect taxes from infidels and Atheists to support schools
in which any system of religion is taught.

The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each
other on account of disagreement in mathematics. Families are not divided
about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father
and mother. It is what people do not know, that they persecute each other
about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace.

Just as long as religion has control of the schools, science will be
an outcast. Let us free our institutions of learning. Let us dedicate them
to the science of eternal truth. Let us tell every teacher to ascertain
all the facts he can -- to give us light, to follow Nature, no matter where
she leads; to be infinitely true to himself and us; to feel that he is
without a chain, except the obligation to be honest; that he is bound by
no books, by no creed, neither by the sayings of the dead nor of the living;
that he is asked to look with his own eyes, to reason for himself without
fear, to investigate in every possible direction, and to bring us the fruit
of all his work.

No man shod in the brogans of impudence should walk into the temple
of another's soul. While every man should be governed by the highest possible
considerations of the public weal, no one has the right to ask for legal
assistance in the support of his particular sect. If Catholics oppose the
public schools I would not oppose them because they are Catholics, but
because I am in favor of the schools. I regard the public school as the
intellectual bread of life. Personally I have no confidence in any religion
that can be demonstrated only to children. I suspect all creeds
that rely implicitly on mothers and nurses. That religion is the best that
commends itself the strongest to men and women of education and genius.
After all, the prejudices of infancy and the ignorance of the aged are
a poor foundation for any system of morals or faith.

The Catholic
now objects to being taxed to support a school in which his religion is
not taught. He is not satisfied with the school that says nothing on the
subject of religion. He insists that it is an outrage to tax him to support
a school where the teacher simply teaches what he knows. And yet this same
Catholic wants his church exempted from taxation, and the tax of an Atheist
or of a Jew increased, when he teaches in his untaxed church that the Atheist
and Jew will both be eternally damned! Is it possible for impudence to
go further?

I insist that no religion should be taught in any school supported by
public money; and by religion I mean superstition. Only that should be
taught in a school that somebody can learn and that somebody can know.
In my judgment, every church should be taxed precisely the same as other
property. The church may claim that it is one of the instruments of civilization
and therefore should be exempt. If you exempt that which is useful, you
exempt every trade and every profession. In my judgment, theatres have
done more to civilize mankind than churches; that is to say, theatres
have done something to civilize mankind -- churches nothing. The effect
of all superstition has been to render men barbarous. I do not believe
in the civilizing effects of falsehood.

To exempt the church from taxation is to pay a part of the priest's
salary.

All the sectarian institutions ought to support themselves. There
should be no Methodist or Catholic or Presbyterian hospitals or orphan
asylums. All these should be supported by the state. There is no such thing
as Catholic charity, or Methodist charity. Charity belongs to humanity,
not to any particular form of faith or religion. You will find as charitable
people who never heard of religion, as you can find in any church.

I think it is superstition, pure and unadulterated. I think that soda
will cure a sour stomach better than thinking. In my judgment, quinine
is a better tonic than meditation. Of course, cheerfulness is good and
depression bad, but if you can absolutely control the body and all its
functions by thought, what is the use of buying coal? Let the mercury go
down and keep yourself hot by thinking. What is the use of wasting money
for food? Fill your stomach with think. According to these Christian Science
people all that really exists is an illusion, and the only realities are
the things that do not exist. They are like the old fellow in India who
said that all things were illusions. One day he was speaking to a crowd
on his favorite hobby. Just as he said "all is an illusion" a
fellow on an elephant rode toward him. The elephant raised his trunk as
though to strike, thereupon the speaker ran away. Then the crowd laughed.
In a few moments the speaker returned. The people shouted: "If all
is illusion, what made you run away?" The speaker replied: "My
poor friends, I said all is illusion. I say so still. There was
no elephant. I did not run away. You did not laugh, and I am not explaining
now. All is illusion."

A great many men are failures by nature and they cannot succeed.
If all have liberty, the few succeed and the many fail. Competition is
just as cruel as monopoly -- a little harder on labor. So, there is nothing
in government control. That would make slaves and destroy all progress.

Profit sharing cannot succeed, because it must go hand in hand with
loss sharing, and the laborers can pay no loss. --

All the remedies that I have heard of seem absurd. You cannot make the
people equal. Millions lack the something, or rather a something, without
which success is impossible. By success I mean -- making a good living
-- the something that gives success eludes us. The great business men have
men in their employ who seem to be their superiors in every way, but they
are not. They lack "the something."

Into this question of capital and labor come all the passions and prejudices
-- all the ignorance and intelligence -- all the ends and ambitions --
all the misery and happiness of human life -- and all the inventions --
all the skill and ingenuity -- all the arts of buying and selling -- all
the theories of money -- of taxation -- of government -- all these, and
a thousand times more, enter into this question. Production, transportation,
distribution, exchange. -- These words suggest almost the infinite. --

The trouble is in the nature of men -- the nature of things. It is too
deep for law.

A few thousand years of civilization may produce men wise enough to
solve the question -- but there are no such men now. We have made some
advance. The hours of labor have been lessened -- children have been rescued
from toil -- mines have been rendered safer -- factories healthier -- and
on the average employers are more humane than ever before.

As a rule, wealth is the result of industry, economy, attention
to business; and as a rule, poverty is the result of idleness, extravagance,
and inattention to business, though to these rules there are thousands
of exceptions. The man who has wasted his time, who has thrown away his
opportunities, is apt to envy the man who has not. For instance, there
are six shoemakers working in one shop. One of them attends to his business.
You can hear the music of his hammer late and early. He is in love with
some girl on the next street. He has made up his mind to be a man; to succeed;
to make somebody else happy; to have a home; and while he is working, in
his imagination he can see his own fireside, with the firelight falling
upon the faces of wife and child. The other five gentlemen work
as little as they can, spend Sunday in dissipation, have the headache Monday,
and, as a result, never advance. The industrious one, the one in love,
gains the confidence of his employer, and in a little while he cuts out
work for the others. The first thing you know he has a shop of his own,
the next a store; because the man of reputation, the man of character,
the man of known integrity, can buy all he wishes in the United States
upon a credit. The next thing you know he is married, and he has built
him a house, and he is happy, and his dream has been realized. After awhile
the same five shoemakers, having pursued the old course, stand on the corner
some Sunday when he rides by. He has a carriage, his wife sits by his side,
her face covered with smiles, and they have two children, their eyes beaming
with joy, and the blue ribbons are fluttering in the wind. And thereupon,
these five shoemakers adjourn to some neighboring saloon and pass a resolution
that there is an irrepressible conflict between capital and labor.

Reasonable labor is a source of joy. To work for wife and child,
to toil for those you love, is happiness; provided you can make them happy.
But to work like a slave, to see your wife and children in rags, to sit
at a table where food is coarse and scarce, to rise at four in the morning,
to work all day and throw your tired bones upon a miserable bed at night;
to live without leisure, without rest, without making those you
love comfortable and happy -- this is not living -- it is dying -- a slow,
lingering crucifixion.

"I send you some of the most wonderful whiskey that ever
drove the skeleton from a feast or painted landscapes in the brain of man.
It is the mingled souls of wheat and corn. In it you will find the sunshine
and the shadow that chased each other over the billowy fields; the breath
of June; the carol of the lark; the dews of night; the wealth of summer
and autumn's rich content, all golden with imprisoned light. Drink it and
you will hear the voices of men and maidens singing the "Harvest Home,"
mingled with the laughter of children. Drink it and you will feel within
your blood the star-lit dawns, the dreamy, tawny dusks of many perfect
days. For forty years this liquid joy has been within the happy staves
of oak, longing to touch the lips of men.

"Nearly four centuries ago Columbus, the adventurous, in
the blessed island of Cuba, saw happy people with rolled leaves between
their lips. Above their heads were little clouds of smoke. Their faces
were serene, and in their eyes was the autumnal heaven of content.
These people were kind, innocent, gentle and loving.

"The climate of Cuba is the friendship of the earth and air, and
of this climate the sacred leaves were born -- the leaves that breed in
the mind of him who uses them the cloudless, happy days in which they grew.

"These leaves make friends, and celebrate with gentle rites the
vows of peace. They have given consolation to the world. They are the companions
of the lonely -- the friends of the imprisoned, of the exile, of workers
in mines, of fellers of forests, of sailors on the desolate seas. They
are the givers of strength and calm to the vexed and wearied minds of those
who build with thought and dream the temples of the soul.

"They tell of hope and rest. They smooth the wrinkled brows of
pain -- drive fears and strange misshapen dreads from out the mind and
fill the heart with rest and peace. Within their magic warp and woof some
potent gracious spell imprisoned lies, that, when released by fire, cloth
softly steal within the fortress of the brain and bind in sleep the captured
sentinels of care and grief.

"These leaves are the friends of the fireside, and their smoke,
like incense, rises from myriads of happy homes. Cuba is the smile of the
sea."

So many people have sworn falsely without affecting their health
that the fear of sudden divine vengeance no longer pales the cheek of the
perjurer. If the vengeance is not sudden, then, according to the church,
the criminal will have plenty of time to repent; so that the oath no longer
affects even the fearful. Would it not be better for the church to teach
that telling the falsehood is the real crime, and that taking the oath
neither adds to nor takes from its enormity? Would it not be better to
teach that he who does wrong must suffer the consequences, whether God
forgives him or not?

There is nothing so pleases a man who has made up his mind to tell
a lie as to have mixed with the mortar of that lie one hair of truth. It
is delightful to smell the perfume of a fact in the hell-broth of his perjury.

Thousands and thousands of lies are told by honest stupidity and
believed by innocent credulity.

He who tries to injure another may or may not succeed, but he cannot
by any possibility fail to injure himself. Men should be taught that there
is no difference between truth-telling and truth-swearing. Nothing is more
vicious than the idea that any ceremony or form of words -- hand-lifting
or book-kissing -- can add, even in the slightest degree, to the perpetual
obligation every human being is under to speak the truth.

The truth, plainly told, naturally commends itself to the intelligent.
Every fact is a genuine link in the infinite chain, and will agree perfectly
with every other fact. A fact asks to be inspected, asks to be understood.
It needs no oath, no ceremony, no supernatural aid. It is independent of
all the gods. A falsehood goes in partnership with theology, and depends
on the partner for success.

Men have sought to make nations and institutions immortal by oaths.
Subjects have sworn to obey kings, and kings have sworn to protect subjects,
and yet the subjects have sometimes beheaded a king; and the king has often
plundered the subjects. The oaths enabled them to deceive each other. Every
absurdity in religion, and all tyrannical institutions, have been patched,
buttressed, and reinforced by oaths; and yet the history of the world shows
the utter futility of putting in the coffin of an oath the political and
religious aspirations of the race.

If Belief affected your eyes, your ears, any of your senses, or your
memory, then, of course, no man ought to be a witness who had not the proper
belief. But unless it can be shown that Atheism interferes with the sight,
the hearing, or memory, why should justice shut the door to truth?

In most of the States of this Union I could not give testimony. Should
a man be murdered before my eyes I could not tell a jury who did it. Christianity
endeavors to make an honest man an outlaw. Christianity has such a contemptible
opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth
unless frightened by a belief in God. No lower opinion of the human race
has ever been expressed.

In old times they would not allow a man to swear at all if he had
the interest of a cent in any civil suit. They would not allow him to testify
when he was on trial for his own liberty and his own life. That was barbarism.
The enemy -- the man who hated him -- he could tell his story, but the
man attacked, the man defending his own liberty and his own life, his mouth
was closed and sealed. We have gotten over that barbarism in nearly all
the States of this Union, and now we say, "Let every man tell his
story; don't allow any avenue to truth to be closed; let us hear all sides,
and whatever is reasonable take as the truth, and what is unreasonable
throw away."

Perjury poisons the wells of truth, the sources of justice. Perjury
leaps from the hedges of circumstance, from the walls of fact, to assassinate
justice and innocence. Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly
of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe
into the axe of an executioner. Perjury out of this air can forge manacles
for free hands. Perjury out of a single word can make a hangman's rope
and noose. Perjury out of a word can build a scaffold upon which the great
and noble must suffer. It was told during the Middle Ages and in the time
of the Inquisition, that the inquisitors had a statue of the Virgin Mary,
and when a man was brave enough to think his own thoughts he was brought
before this tribunal and before this beautiful statue, robed in gorgeous
robes and decked with jewels, and as a punishment he was made to embrace
it. The inquisitor touched a hidden spring; the arms of the statue clutched
the victim and drew him to a breast filled with daggers. Such is perjury.

Is there any safety in human society if you will take the testimony
of a perjured man?

He cannot knowingly weigh with false scales and believe in the correctness
of the result.

What perfect fetichism it is, to imagine that a man will tell the
truth simply because he has kissed an old piece of sheepskin stained with
the saliva of all classes. A farce of this kind adds nothing to the testimony
of an honest man; it simply allows a rogue to give weight to his false
testimony. This is really the only result that can be accomplished by kissing
the Bible. A desperate villain, for the purpose of getting revenge, or
making money, will gladly go through the ceremony, and ignorant juries
and superstitious judges will be imposed upon. The whole system of oaths
if false, and does harm instead of good. Let every man walk into court
and tell his story, and let the truth of the story be judged by its reasonableness,
taking into consideration the character of the witness, the interest he
has, and the position he occupies in the controversy, and then let it be
the business of the jury to ascertain the real truth -- to throw away the
unreasonable and the impossible, and make up their verdict only upon what
they believe to be reasonable and true. An honest man does not need the
oath, and a rascal uses it simply to accomplish his purpose. If the history
of courts proved that every man, after kissing the Bible, told the truth,
and that those who failed to kiss sometimes lied, I should be in favor
of swearing all people on the Bible; but the experience of every lawyer
is, that kissing the Bible is not always the preface of a true story. It
is often the ceremonial embroidery of a falsehood.

If there is an infinite God who attends to the affairs of
men, it seems to me almost a sacrilege to publicly appeal to him in every
petty trial. If one will go into any court, and notice the manner in which
oaths are administered -- the utter lack of solemnity -- the matter-of-course
air with which the whole thing is done, he will be convinced that it is
a form of no importance.

A witness was being sworn. The judge noticed that he was not holding
up his hand. He said to the clerk: "Let the witness hold up his right
hand." "His right arm was shot off," replied the clerk.
"Let him hold up his left, then." "That was shot off, too,
your honor." "Well, then, let him raise one foot; no man can
be sworn in this court without holding something up."

All honest men will tell the truth if they can; therefore, oaths
will have no effect upon them. Dishonest men will not tell the truth unless
the truth happens to suit their purpose; therefore, oaths will have no
effect upon them.

My own opinion is, that if every copy of the Bible in the world
were destroyed, there would be some way to ascertain the truth in judicial
proceedings; and any other book would do just as well to swear witnesses
upon, or a block in the shape of a book covered with some kind of calfskin
could do equally well, or just the calfskin would do. Nothing is more laughable
than the performance of this ceremony, and I have never seen in
court one calf kissing the skin of another, that I did not feel humiliated
that such things were done in the name of Justice.

A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking God's
name in vain, but millions of men, women, and children have been stolen
from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in this
infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God.

Guilt is always conscious that it is guilty. Guilt is always suspecting
detection. Guilt is infinitely suspicious. Guilt would make all the papers
as nearly right as possible. Guilt would look out for erasures. Guilt would
abhor blots. Guilt would have avoided having blanks filled in with different
colored inks. Guilt would want everything fitting everything else, nothing
to excite suspicion. Innocence is negligent. The man with honest intentions
is the one that does not care. But the guilty man does not travel in the
snow. He wants no tracks left.

I care nothing about the origin of the ceremony. The objection to
the oath is this: It furnishes a falsehood with a letter of credit. It
supplies the wolf with sheep's clothing and covers the hands of Jacob with
hair. It blows out the light, and in the darkness Leah is taken for Rachel.
It puts upon each witness a kind of theological gown. This gown
hides the moral rags of the depraved wretch as well as the virtues of the
honest man. The oath is a mask that falsehood puts on, and for a moment
is mistaken for truth. It gives to dishonesty the advantage of solemnity.
The tendency of the oath is to put all testimony on an equality. The obscure
rascal and the man of sterling character both "swear," and jurors
who attribute a miraculous quality to the oath, forget the real difference
in the men, and give about the same weight to the evidence of each, because
both were "sworn." A scoundrel is delighted with the opportunity
of going through a ceremony that gives importance and dignity to his story,
that clothes him for the moment with respectability, loans him the appearance
of conscience, and gives the ring of true coin to the base metal. To him
the oath is a shield. He is in partnership, for a moment, with God, and
people who have no confidence in the witness credit the firm.

The alchemist did not succeed in finding any stone the touch of
which transmitted baser things to gold; and priests have not invented yet
an oath with power to force from falsehood's desperate lips the pearl of
truth.

Charity has no color. It is neither white nor black. Justice
and Patriotism are the same. Danger does not draw these nice distinctions
as to race or color. Hunger is not proud. Famine is exceedingly democratic
in the matter of food. In the moment of peril, prejudices perish.

The moment a prejudice is known to be a prejudice, it disappears.
Ignorance is the soil in which prejudice must grow. Touched by a ray of
light, it dies.

Suspicion is not evidence.

Prejudice is born of ignorance and malice. One of the greatest men
of this country said prejudice is the spider of the mind. It weaves its
web over every window and over every crevice where light can enter, and
then disputes the existence of the light that it has excluded. That is
prejudice. Prejudice will give the lie to all the other senses. It will
swear the northern star out of the sky of truth. You must avoid it. It
is the womb of injustice, and a man who cannot rise above prejudice is
not a civilized man; he is simply a barbarian.

I see no reason why the white and Black men cannot live together
in the same land, under the same flag. The beauty of liberty is you cannot
have it unless you give it away, and the more you give away the more you
have. I know that my liberty is secure only because others are free.

I am perfectly willing to live in a country with such men as Frederick
Douglass and Senator Bruce. I have always preferred a good, clever Black
man to a mean white man, and I am of the opinion that I shall continue
in that preference. Now, if we could only have a colonization bill that
would get rid of all the rowdies, all the rascals and hypocrites, I would
like to see it carried out, though some people might insist that it would
amount to a repudiation of the national debt and that hardly enough would
be left to pay the interest. No, talk as we will, the colored people helped
to save this Nation. They have been at all times and in all places the
friends of our flag; a flag that never really protected them. And for my
part, I am willing that they should stand forever beneath that flag, the
equal in rights of all other people.

As the people become educated, they become liberal. Bigotry is the
provincialism of the mind. Men are bigoted who are not acquainted with
the thoughts of others. They have been taught one thing, and have been
made to believe that their little mental horizon is the circumference
of all knowledge. The bigot lives in an ignorant village, surrounded by
ignorant neighbors.

It is very easy to see why colored people should hate us, but why
we should hate them is beyond my comprehension. They never sold our wives.
They never robbed our cradles. They never scarred our backs. They never
pursued us with bloodhounds. They never branded our flesh.

It has been said that it is hard to forgive a man to whom we have done
a great injury. I can conceive of no other reason why we should hate the
colored people. To us they are a standing reproach. Their history is our
shame. Their virtues seem to enrage some white people -- their patience
to provoke, and their forgiveness to insult. Turn the tables -- change
places -- and with what fierceness, with what ferocity, with what insane
and passionate intensity we would hate them!

The colored people do not ask for revenge -- they simply ask for justice.
They are willing to forget the past -- willing to hide their scars -- anxious
to bury the broken chains, and to forget the miseries and hardships, the
tears and agonies, of two hundred years.

The old issues are again upon us. Is this a Nation? Have all citizens
of the United States equal rights, without regard to race or color? Is
it the duty of the General government to protect its citizens? Can the
Federal arm be palsied by the action or non-action of a State?

Another opportunity is given for the people of this country
to take sides. According to my belief, the supreme thing for every man
to do is to be absolutely true to himself. All consequences -- whether
rewards or punishments, whether honor and power, or disgrace and poverty,
are as dreams undreamt. I have made my choice. I have taken my stand. Where
my brain and heart go, there I will publicly and openly walk. Doing this,
is my highest conception of duty. Being allowed to do this, is liberty.

The Negro who can pass me in the race will receive my admiration,
and he can count on my friendship. No man ever lived who proved his superiority
by trampling on the weak.

When you are asked to find a verdict contrary to the evidence, when
you are asked to piece out the testimony with your suspicions, then you
are bound to take into consideration all the consequences. When appeals
are made to your prejudice and to your fears, then the consequences should
rise like mountains before you. Then you should think of the lives you
are asked to wreck, of the homes your verdict would darken, of the hearts
it would desolate, of the cheeks it would wet with tears, and of the reputations
it would blast and blacken, of the wives it would worse than widow, and
of the children it would more than orphan. When you are asked to find a
false verdict think of these consequences. When you are asked to please
the public think of these consequences. When you are asked to
please the press think of these consequences. When you are asked to act
from fear, hatred, prejudice, malice, or cowardice think then of these
consequences. But whenever you do right, consequences are nothing to you,
because you are not responsible for them. Whoever does right clothes himself
in a suit of armor that the arrows of consequences can never penetrate.
When you do wrong you are responsible for all the consequences, to the
last sigh and the last tear. If you do right nature is responsible. If
you do wrong you are responsible.

The higher you get in the scale of being, the grander, the nobler,
and the tenderer you will become. Kindness is always an evidence of greatness.
Malice is the property of small souls. Whoever allows the feeling of brotherhood
to die in his heart becomes a wild beast.

No man ever was, no man ever will be, the superior of the man whom
he robs. No man ever was, no man ever will be, the superior of the man
he steals from. I had rather be a slave than a slave-master. I had rather
be stolen from than be a thief. I had rather be the wronged than the wrong-doer.
And allow me to say again to impress it forever upon every man that hears
me, you will always be the inferior of the man you wrong. Every race is
inferior to the race it tramples upon and robs. There never was a man that
could trample upon human rights and be superior to the man upon
whom he trampled. And let me say another thing: No government can stand
upon the crushed rights of one single human being; ... [it] will carry
in its own bosom the seeds of its own death and destruction, and cannot
stand. A government founded upon anything except liberty and justice cannot
and ought not to stand. All the wrecks on either side of the stream of
time, all the wrecks of the great cities and nations that have passed away
-- all are a warning that no nation founded upon injustice can stand.

Liberty is not a social question. Civil equality is not social equality.
We are equal only in rights. No two persons are of equal weight, or height.
There are no two leaves in all the forests of the earth alike -- no two
blades of grass -- no two grains of sand -- no two hairs. No two anythings
in the physical world are precisely alike. Neither mental nor physical
equality can be created by law, but law recognizes the fact that all men
have been clothed with equal rights by Nature, the mother of us all.

The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit
as he who hates the poor man because he is poor. It is the spirit of caste.
The proud useless despises the honest useful. The parasite idleness scorns
the great oak of labor on which it feeds, and that lifts it to the light.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under
foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color.

They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain.

Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above
all, of the love of liberty.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior.

He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for
the defenseless.

He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting
others.

When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has
shrunk and narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty
of death, why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?

Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I do not take
gods, heavens or hells into account. My horizon is the known, and my estimate
of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world. People should
not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for other worlds or the
hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys, our sufferings and our
duties are here.

Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their
property. The fear of the future overpowers them. Things lose proportion,
they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill themselves.
The disappointed in love, broken in heart -- the light fading from their
lives -- seek the refuge of death.

Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways -- who mangle
their throats with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs,
take poisons that torture like the rack -- such persons must be insane.
But those who take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments
for and against, and who decide that death is best -- the only good --
and then resort to reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full
possession of their minds.

Life is not the same to all -- to some a blessing, to some a curse,
to some not much in any way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some
with the keenest joy and some with indifference.

Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number
of suicides. The fear of God, of judgment, of eternal pain will stay the
hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural
death. A belief in eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such believers
to suffer the pangs of this life. When there is no fear of the future,
when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have less hesitation
about ending their lives. On the other hand, orthodox religion has driven
millions to insanity. It has caused parents to murder their children and
many thousands to destroy themselves and others.

Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.

We should remember that nothing happens but the natural. Back of
every suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and efficient
cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each other.
There is no space between -- no room for chance. Given a certain heart
and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the necessary result.
If we wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions. We must by education,
by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the value of the average
life. We must cultivate the brain and heart -- do away with false pride
and false modesty. We must become generous enough to help our fellows without
degrading them. We must make industry -- useful work of all kinds -- honorable.
We must mingle a little affection with our charity -- a little fellowship.
We should allow those who have sinned to really reform. We should not think
only of what the wicked have done, but we should think of what we have
wanted to do. People do not hate the sick. Why should they despise the
mentally weak -- the diseased in brain?

If Christians would only think, they would see that orthodox religion
rests upon suicide -- that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without
suicide the whole world would have been lost.

If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the
Jews without hurting them. But instead of using his power he allowed them
to take his life.

If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death
with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not
say that he committed suicide?

There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God, and allowed the Jews
to kill him, then he consented to his own death -- refused, though
perfectly able to defend and protect himself, and was, in fact, a suicide.

As long as there shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony
and crime, men and women will untie life's knot and seek the peace of death.

To the hopelessly imprisoned -- to the dishonored and despised -- to
those who have failed, who have no future, no hope -- to the abandoned,
the brokenhearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men
and women -- how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!

And even to the most fortunate, death at last is a welcome deliverer.
Death is as natural and as merciful as life. When we have journeyed long
-- when we are weary -- when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for
the cool kisses of the night -- when the senses are dull -- when the pulse
is faint and low -- when the mists gather on the mirror of memory -- when
the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly perceived -- when the
future has but empty hands -- death is as welcome as a strain of music.

After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next to eternal
happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by
no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and
forever.

The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in
spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they limp and stagger
and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end. The wonder
is that so few of the miserable are brave enough to die -- that so many
are terrified by the "something after death" -- by the spectres
and phantoms of superstition.

Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in the arctic
snows -- how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea -- how
they linger in famine -- how they fight disaster and despair! On the crumbling
edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last full of hope
and courage.

But many have not such natures. They cannot bear defeat. They are disheartened
by disaster. They lie down on the field of conflict and give the earth
their blood.

They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should not curse or
blame -- we should pity. On their pallid faces our tears should fall.

We know something of ourselves -- of the average man -- of his thoughts,
passions, fears and aspirations -- something of his sorrows and his joys,
his weakness, his liability to fall -- something of what he resists --
the struggles, the victories and the failures of his life. We know something
of the tides and currents of the mysterious sea -- something of the circuits
of the wayward winds -- but we do not know where the wild storms are born
that wreck and rend. Neither do we know in what strange realm the mists
and clouds are formed that darken all the heaven of the mind, nor from
whence comes the tempest of the brain in which the will to do, sudden as
the lightning's flash, seizes and holds the man until the dreadful deed
is done ...

Our ignorance should make us hesitate. Our weakness should make
us merciful.

The other day a man was tried ... for having tried to kill himself.
I think he pleaded guilty, and the Judge, after speaking of the terrible
crime of the poor wretch, sentenced him to the penitentiary for two years.
This was an outrage; infamous in every way, and a disgrace to our civilization.

Is suicide a sin? I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase
or not. If it is, then there must be, on the average, more trouble, more
sorrow, more failure, and, consequently, more people are driven to despair.
In civilized life there is a great struggle, great competition, and many
fail. To fail in a great city is like being wrecked at sea. In the country
a man has friends; he can get a little credit, a little help, but in the
city it is different. The man is lost in the multitude. In the roar of
streets, his cry is not heard. Death becomes his only friend. Death promises
release from want, from hunger and pain, and so the poor wretch lays down
his burden, dashes it from his shoulders and falls asleep.

To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is that so many endure
and suffer to the natural end, that so many nurse the spark of life in
huts and prisons, keep it and guard it through years of misery
and want; support it by beggary, by eating the crust found in the gutter,
and to whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear and dread.
Why should the man, sitting amid the wreck of all he had, the loved ones
dead, friends lost, seek to lengthen, to preserve his life? What can the
future have for him?

Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself. When life
is of no value to him, when he can be of no real assistance to others,
why should a man continue? When he is of no benefit, when he is a burden
to those he loves, why should he remain? The old idea was that God made
us and placed us here for a purpose and that it was our duty to remain
until he called us. The world is outgrowing this absurdity. What pleasure
can it give God to see a man devoured by a cancer; to see the quivering
flesh slowly eaten; to see the nerves throbbing with pain? Is this a festival
for God? Why should the poor wretch stay and suffer? A little morphine
would give him sleep -- the agony would be forgotten and he would pass
unconsciously from happy dreams to painless death.

If God determines all births and deaths, of what use is medicine and
why should doctors defy with pills and powders, the decrees of God? No
one, except a few insane, act now according to this childish superstition.
Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the midst of a burning building,
from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a bullet through his brain
or a dagger in his heart? Would it give God pleasure to see him
burn? When did the man lose the right of self-defense?

So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and
ruin his family and friends? Why should he add to the injury? Why should
he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of others,
with grief and pain, with agony and tears?

Why should any man deem it his duty or feel it a pleasure to say
harsh and cruel things of the dead? Why pierce the brow of death with the
thorns of hatred?

Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear.
He knew that he could defeat the Emperor. He knew that "at the bottom
of every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger,
Liberty sat and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he allowed
himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. He said: "There is this
blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits innumerable,
and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in which I will sail,
so will I choose the time and manner of my death."

To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.

Judge Normile died by his own hand. Certainly he was not afraid
of the future. He was not appalled by death. He died by his own hand. Can
anything be more pitiful -- more terrible? How can a man in the flowing
tide and noon of life destroy himself? What storms there must have been
within the brain; what tempests must have raved and wrecked; what lightnings
blinded and revealed; what hurrying clouds obscured and hid the stars;
what monstrous shapes emerged from gloom; what darkness fell upon the day;
what visions filled the night; how the light failed; how paths were lost;
how highways disappeared; how chasms yawned; until one thought -- the thought
of death -- swift, compassionate and endless -- became the insane monarch
of the mind.

Standing by the prostrate form of one who thus found death, it is far
better to pity than to revile -- to kiss the clay than curse the man.

I am an Infidel -- an unbeliever -- and yet I hope that all the
children of men may find peace and joy. No matter how they leave this world,
from altar or from scaffold, crowned with virtue or stained with crime,
I hope that good may come to all.

It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short
journey. The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon, the
twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what he
cannot bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness, or
in the calm of thought and choice, the beleaguered soul finds the serenity
of death.

Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We know nothing of any
realm that lies beyond the horizon of the known, beyond the end
of life. Let us be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering,
the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by grief and shame,
by misery and want, by chance and fate until their only friend is death.